Antibiotic Production by Soil Actinomycetes

Students attempt to identify Streptomycetes with antibiotic properties in local soil samples. The purpose of this investigation is to try to discover Actinomycetes from local soil samples that have antibiotic properties. The use of known species of Streptomycetes that produce antibiotics can be easily seen as they produce zones of inhibition on a lawn of bacteria; the antibiotic activity from local soil samples is variable and takes many samples to find a few that produce zones of inhibition.